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Updated Futures Betting Odds for the 2018 NBA Championship

For three years and counting the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers have formed a two-team race atop the NBA Championship futures betting market.

That pattern held at the beginning of the 2018 season, when the defending champion Dubs (+100) and runner-up Cavs (+500) opened as the clear favorites to face off in their fourth consecutive NBA Finals. And while the regular season has been relegated to a glorified scrimmage in years past, the current campaign’s unpredictable nature has upended the odds – if only slightly.

With the NBA taking the week off for All-Star Game festivities, online sportsbook Bovada still has Golden State (-175) as the overwhelming favorite to win their third ring in four years. But in a refreshing change of pace, a fellow Western Conference juggernaut in the Houston Rockets (+400) offers the next best odds to win it all.

The most recent edition of the Warriors has ridden its core four – Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green – to a 44-14 record and a +8.1 point differential. Both are second-best, however, as the high-octane Rockets have seamlessly integrated Chris Paul into head coach Mike D’Antoni’s run and gun offense. Houston sits atop the West by a half-game at 44-13, and their +8.7 point differential is the best in all of basketball.

As for Cleveland (+600), the team’s odds to win a title may not have changed all that much, but the roster itself is almost completely different nowadays. Following the trade of Kyrie Irving for Isaiah Thomas, the Cavs experienced a few months of upheaval and ugly basketball. The team suffered through multiple losing streaks, while enduring a war of words in the locker room, and even in the media.

An ambitious trade deadline plan spearheaded by LeBron James saw former sidekick Dwyane Wade shipped out, along with a disgruntled Thomas, and bench pieces like Channing Frye, Derrick Rose, and Jae Crowder. The new-look Cleveland squad – which now includes newly added role players George Hill, Rodney Hood, Larry Nance Jr., and Jordan Clarkson – proceeded to win three straight games over playoff contenders, and on the road no less.

Today, the Cavs sit at 34-22, but their barely perceptible point differential of just +0.2 puts them in line with the New Orleans Pelicans rather than the league’s elite.

Cleveland’s post-trade winning jag included an impressive win over the Boston Celtics (+1200), the next team on the Bovada title odds totem pole. Boston has overcome the opening night loss of Gordon Hayward to the tune of a 40-19 record, with Irving providing emphatic proof of his ability to be a top team’s number one option.

Next up on the betting board is the Toronto Raptors (+1600), a team that finally seems to have put it all together after a few years as a fringe contender. In fact, the Raps lead the East with a 41-16 record, and they hit the break riding a seven-game win streak. And at +8.5, the Raptors are the only team aside from the Warriors and Rockets with a point differential higher than +3.5 – showing they can score in bunches with the game’s best.

The Oklahoma City Thunder (+2000) and San Antonio Spurs (+3300) are the only other teams offering better than 66 to 1, so the league is still as stratified as ever.